Almost all of my software is based on Linux. Over the
last few months I have been moving it onto Windows also. This has been made
easier by the use of the wxWidgets library. It is possible that I may also
rewrite Baken to use that library at some stage and it too will then become
available for Windows. For Windows I supply a pre-built installer, just
download the .exe file and run it, the rest should be self evident, for
Linux I only supply source code. I am willing to answer most questions on my
software but experience has shown that Mandrake Linux has a problem.
Therefore I will not support someone using my software under
Mandrake. If you work out how to get it to work on Mandrake simply then
drop me a line and I may reconsider my stand on it.

Linux Kernel AX.25, NET/ROM and ROSE

I took over the Linux AX.25 code from Alan Cox GW4PTS
in 1995 and during that year I re-wrote it using the SDL diagrams published
in the 7th ARRL CNC Proceedings, and added NET/ROM a short while later. A
while after that I added ROSE and that spawned the Linux X.25 and LAPB
implementations. I handed over development of all of these to other people
in 1998 and I have no connection to any of them any more. So please don't
send me e-mail about them, but instead send any questions to the linux-hams
or linux-x25 mailing lists (as appropriate) hosted at
vger.kernel.org

WS Tools

WS Tools is an implementation of FSK441 and JT44 (and
one day JT6M) which runs on Linux and Windows, and maybe some day on the
Mac. It is open source and uses different algorithms in the main from those
used in the original WSJT. I am working on WS Tools to both teach myself DSP
techniques and to provide open source implementations of these data modes. I
believe that amateur radio software should be open source, its in the spirit
of the hobby.

FSK441 is used specifically for Meteor Scatter,
usually on 2m, its advantage is its very high data rate so that even a
"ping" of 40ms can still provide useful data. JT44 is an
effective weak signal mode for EME (moonbounce) and Troposcatter,
it can typically decode data when the signal is below the noise level for
most people. JT44 has now been superseeded by JT65B which I would implement
except that I would not be able to match the performance of WSJT due to the
use of proprietry techniques that I have no hope of replicating. I do have
plans to leapfron JT65B onto something better, but its all a matter of time.
I may have a go at JT65B in due course but it would not be as good as the
WSJT version. If you would like to read more about these
modes then have a look at Joe Taylors K1JT website or
its mirror here. I have no plans to implement FSK441B and FSK441C
as they have not found favour in Europe, which is the main centre of MS
activity.

I went to the UKW-Tagung at Weinheim on the weekend of 7/8.09.2002 and
met a number of EME operators who expressed an interest in the development
of JT44 for Linux, thanks guys. While at the show I bought a sound card to
radio interface from Dierking, as well as the interfacing it also allows me
to use one microphone and one headphone for two radios which I find very
useful. I also wrote a paper about the development of my JT44 software and
was published in DUBUS 4/2002, it is available here as a Word for Windows document. An earlier
version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of the Leuven Microwave Meeting in
November 2002, this newer version has diagrams and better
descriptions.

These screen shots are little old now, but they give a
flavour of what the programs look like. Newer screen shots will be provided
in due course.

If you want to build WS Tools from the source code
under Linux, then you requires the wxWidgets, the FFTW, and libsndfile libraries to build. It is probable that your
Linux distribution already has libsndfile already included.

If you are a Windows user then you can simply use the
WSTools.exe file which is a proper installer, you will then be able to use
the software immediately. If you want to build WS Tools under Windows then
you will need to install MinGW and MSYS, FFTW as well as the Windows version of wxWidgets which
is named wxMSW, to build a proper Windows installer you will also need a
copy of NSIS. The
versions that I used were MinGW 3.1.0-1, MSYS 1.0.9, wxMSW 2.4.2 and NSIS
2.0.

If you are using any part of WS Tools please send me
an e-mail. I am very interested to hear of your successes and/or failures
with it.

The first known QSO using JT44 from WS Tools (LinWSJT
as it was called then) has been reported by Milan OK1XH. It was made on
Sunday 26.01.2003 at 0941 UTC between OK1XH and OK2POI on 50.254 MHz over a
path of 225 kms. Initial power was 20W which was reduced to 1W with perfect
copy. I found the following DX Cluster information via Google.

Morten LA2YMA (ex LC1OCT) has made many MS QSOs on 2m
using FSK441, and publicising the fact on the DX Cluster. He is probably the
first person to make a QSO using FSK441 (as well as finding some bugs with
it), and I listened using FSK441 during the 2003 Geminids, it was very
exciting.

I am still waiting for the first WS Tools JT44 EME QSO
to be reported. If you have made such a QSO then please send me an e-mail
and I will publicise the fact here.

I would really appreciate it if both Windows and Linux
users try this version out and give me feedback on it. The file WSTools.exe
is a Windows installer which will install WS Tools just like a professional
program. If you want to build WS Tools for yourself on Windows then see my
entry for UKW Tools below which details the software that you will need to
do so.

The purpose of this project is to provide a set of
tools which allow for microwave operators and mobile radio implementors to be
able to survey locations. It grew out of my need for a Linux implementation
of the G4JNT GEOG suite of BASIC programs for DOS. This work well
under DOSEMU under Linux but they are limited to just the UK. By its nature
(it is based on UK-only NGRs) it is not easy to adapt it to cover other
areas.

UKW Tools from version 0.3.0 can make use of the SRTM, GTOPO30 and Globe data files that are publically available. The SRTM
data covers most of the world at approximately 90m intervals but has
inaccuracies, the GTOPO30 and Globe data covers the whole world at
approximately 900m intervals and is accurate. UKW Tools can use both sets of
data either separately or together in order to provide the best data
possible, without paying for it
:-)

Here are a few screen captures of an older version to
show the program in operation. I apologise for the image quality, I had to
compress them quite hard in order to make them reasonably small.

The first picture is the main screen of UKW Tools and
this is the main control centre for the rest of the program. Here you can
see a pseudo-3D map of a part of Derbyshire, the county where I live. The
area on the right gives information about what is happening on the map. From
here the other functions can be started. You can see that there is a
location in the centre of the map marked as Alport Heights.

The second picture is a line of sight coverage plot
from the location marked as Alport Heights. This is a major communications
site and pictures of it can be seen on my pictures page. The green area
represents the coverage from the top of the mast to any structure which is
8m above ground level, I have also included some local towns on the map. UKW
Tools can plot two such sites simultaneously so that overlapping coverage
can be seen. The third picture is a 3D plot of a 30km square centred on
Alport Heights. The palette may be changed as can the viewing angle and
other parameters. The fourth picture is the horizon view from Alport Heights
(from the top of one of the masts) up to a distance of 50kms. As you can
see, in most directions it has a sub zero elevation angle and it is an
excellent location. That is why there are seven communications masts there
including the Home Office and more mundane things like the GB3DY 70cms
amateur repeater on RB10.

The fifth picture is of a path plot from Alport
Heights to the mast of Zycomm Electronics in Ripley. It is not a great distance
but it does show the quality of the SRTM data. At some point I would like to
compare this plot with the one generated by a commercial package which we
have at work. The first large valley from the left is where Ambergate is
located, this is where my first house was, as you can see it was not a good
location for anything above 136kHz.

Like WS Tools above, UKW Tools requires the wxWidgets library. For
Windows you will need a copy of MinGW and MSYS as well as the Windows version of wxWidgets which
is named wxMSW, to build a proper Windows installer you will also need a
copy of NSIS. The
versions that I used were MinGW 3.1.0-1, MSYS 1.0.9, wxMSW 2.4.2 and NSIS
2.0. Apart from some changes in the GUI, it all works fine. In fact all of
the screenshots were made under Windows 2000. On Mac OS X you can use the
standard GCC and wxGTK and build it as a X11 application. It also runs fine
on 64-bit Linux on an AMD Athlon, apparently it is amazingly fast on that
platform.

The latest versions of UKW Tools include the Irregular
Terrain Model routines that allow for relatively accurate forecasting of
coverage over line-of-sight and non line-of-sight paths. There is a detailed
README file within the package that explains how to use it.

The Windows executable file is a pre-built copy of UKW
Tools with a proper Windows installer. It was built on Windows 2000 and will
work on Windows 98, ME and XP. There is a crude icon for UKW Tools which is
used on the Desktop and the Start Menu shortcuts, if someone wants to
provide a better one, please do so.

Since there are additional files to download, and the
names of these files may be confusing, I have added a Javascript calculator
to help you determine which you need. I have done some testing and it
appears to work and gives the correct answers for a few example locations that
I tried. If you find any mistakes with its output then let me know. I hope
it helps people to use UKW Tools more effectively. Simply enter the first
four characters of the locator square that you are interested in and press
the Calculate button.

Important Note

You need to download the SRTM data for your area, but
you only need GTOPO30 data OR Globe data for your area, not both. I
personally use GTOPO30 and that is better tested than the Globe data in UKW
Tools. Also the GTOPO30 files are smaller than the Globe files. Another
things to watch out for is that under Windows, WinZip makes unreasonable
assumptions when unpacking the GTOPO30 data. Before extracting the GTOPO30
data, go into WinZip Preferences and switch off "Intelligent CR/LF
translation in TAR files", or words to that effect. Also note that SRTM
files don't exist for areas that are entirely water but my calculator
doesn't understand this so it may reference SRTM files that you won't find
anywhere.

SRTM files:

N53W002 and N53W001

GTOPO30 file:

W020N90

Globe file:

b10g

I am collecting files of sites and towns for countries
other than the UK, and with permission will make them available here for
other people to download and use with UKW Tools. I will make my complete UK
town list available as well as the sites list that is included with UKW
Tools. If you can provide a town or sites list then please drop me a line, I
can do simple format conversions if needed.

This is a small project that I worked on because I had
been given a Palm PDA (an M505) by a friend and I decided to have a play and
see what I could do with it. Since I am a developer I decided to have a go
at developing for it and I found a need for a program that would allow me to
calculate distances and bearings while out portable on the microwave bands.
I played with Paul W1GHZs BD program and independantly Peter G3PHO found the GL program which was a
little better. In order to make it more useful for us here in the UK I added
support for eight character locators (like IO93FB44) and for the UK only NGR
system. Along the way I Anglicised the help file and headings and upgraded
the database handling to allow for more database files.

The resulting version of GL works well and has been
used in the field (literally) with good results. I contacted the original
author about my version of GL but got no reply. So I make my version of GL
available here for all to use, under the same GPL licence as the original, I
do not plan to make any enhancements to GL, but I will do bug fixes. If you
have a great idea for GL then contact me, but remember the memory size of
the Palm is small so please be realistic.

If you just want to install the program on your PDA
then just download the gl.prc file and upload it to your Palm. The zip file
contains the source code, and the .prc file, for people who want to change
the program or just look at some Palm C code. I built it using the open
source Palm development tools running under Cygwin on Windows 2000, as was
the Palm OS Emulator.

This is a satellite tracking program that I wrote many
years ago (about 1990/91) and was originally run under DOS and supported the
Hercules monochrome graphic card. I ported it to use Motif under Linux in
around 1994 and the modified it to use the GTK widgets in 1999. This release
0.3 is a large upgrade to 0.2.3, it includes the possibility to track
multiple satellites simultaneously, corrected squint display (including
AO-40 squint mode), and a display of next AOS/LOS dates and
times.

This screenshot was made under Linux, but it will
probably build and run on most UNIX versions provided GTK has been installed
correctly. MTrack can also be built to run under Windows by using the Cygwin
tool set and installing the Windows version of the GTK widgets. To build it
under Windows requires some editing of the makefile and is only recommended
for experienced developers. Please note that I am no longer maintaining
MTrack, now that Predict has reached a much greater level of usability
then I recommend that all MTrack users should migrate to it.

Baken is a program to allow the displaying of VHF, UHF
and microwave beacons within Europe. I originally wrote it in 1999 to find
all the local 3cms beacons to my old QTH in Zürich. The biggest problem that
I found with this project was finding up-to-date and accurate information
about beacons, especially on the microwave bands. Many beacons on the higher
bands are personal beacons and are not co-ordinated. Thankfully the DUBUS
list includes personal beacons and other non-IARU beacons and that is the
basis of the beacon list in the current version.

The first picture shows the main Europe map of beacons
for 3cms, by clicking on a locator square (JN47 in this example) another
window with details of the beacons in that square are displayed. By moving
the mouse near to a beacon in the window, detailed data about that beacon is
displayed as well as the distance and bearing from the home location. From
version 0.4 the program can now display multiple bands simultaneously as
well as many other locations, the distribution includes packet nodes and
voice repeaters from around Europe. Please note that these screenshots are
from Baken 0.3 and there are some small differences compared to the latest
version. Baken 0.5.1 and later include the option to calculate a reflection
point given two locators and two bearings, this is very useful for Rain
Scatter.

This picture is of Baken being used by Paul M0EYT (as
G4RFR/P) in the May 2003 6/3cms cumulatives contest. Its always nice to see
my software being used and have it reported to me. It inspires me to work on
it and to add new features, so if you use my software and you like it, then
drop me a line and tell me, I really appreciate it.

Like MTrack, this program was built under Linux using
the GTK library and like MTrack it should build and run on most UNIX
platforms with little or no modification. It will also build under Windows
using the Cygwin tools and the Win32 port of the GTK/GDK/GLib libraries.
Please note that there may be some portability issues within the code for any
platform other than Intel at this moment, it is hoped to remove this issue
in a future version.

My eventual aim is to roll the functionality of Baken
into UKW Tools to provide a primitive GIS system for microwave amateurs.
This is a long term project and may take years, especially since both Baken
and UKW Tools work well as they are.